The last events of 2015 – December visit to St. Petersburg

The last joint project activities in 2015 took place in St. Petersburg where Magnus, Diana and Vera presented papers at the XIV Ethnographic Readings “Trade and traders from an ethno-cultural perspective”, organised by the Russian Ethnographic Museum (8-10 December). The conference brought together Russian scholars mainly from St. Petersburg and Moscow and our presence added an ‘international’ dimension. Vera and Diana presented in Russian, but as ‘foreigners’ we were allocated an English-Russian interpreter whose formal task, we were told, included ‘supervising’ us during our free time. The actual intention behind this supervision was somehow ‘lost in translation’ – in any case we managed successfully to explore the city on our own.

As part of our trip, we presented our project in the magnificent settings of the Golden Hall of the European University of St. Petersburg, met new colleagues, anthropologists and historians, and conducted a blitz field work on various market places in the city. Apraksin Dvor, the most central and largest of the whole sale and retail markets, definitely calls for further investigation. Not only did we find various goods procured in Yiwu and large groups of Afghani traders, but the market also seems well integrated into a web of commercial routes within Russia that are interesting in their own right. If all goes according to the (preliminary) plans, we will be back!